Message #2671

[Morrison]

But Houdini was as troubled as he was famous. He was obsessed with the death of his mother, having been almost unnaturally close to her during her lifetime. After she died, he was observed many times at the cemetery where she was buried, lying face down on her grave and holding long conversations with her. He felt that he had to communicate with her and that was when he turned to Spiritualism.

In a short time, Houdini’s visits to the Spiritualists revealed a number of fake mediums who were using poor stage magic and trying to pass the tricks off as the work of the spirits. He claimed that he could duplicate the tricks on stage and it was not long before his efforts to reach his mother became secondary to his need to expose the fraudulent mediums. He quickly became very bitter and willing to believe that all of the mediums were fakes. He began investigating their methods and claims and became a self-appointed crusader against them.



Houdini and his beloved mother shortly before her death
 

In 1920, during a tour of England, Houdini met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a spokesperson for Spiritualism. The two of them became good friends, despite their opposing views on the supernatural. Houdini was delighted to learn that there was at least one intelligent person who believed in Spiritualism and found that man in his friend Conan Doyle. The author was convinced of the value of the movement to the world and had given up most of his lucrative writing career to lecture about Spiritualism around the world. He also found that Houdini’s knowledge of the spirit world was as vast as his own, although their attitudes differed.  In 1922, a rift formed between the two men after a failed attempt by Lady Jean Doyle to contact Houdini's mother.

The rift between the two men, which began with this event, deepened shortly afterward when Conan Doyle, and other Spiritualists, began stating that Houdini’s exposure of mediums was simply to cover the fact that he was a medium himself! They claimed that many of his extraordinary escapes were actually done by Houdini "dematerializing" from the traps that he had placed himself in. "This ability", Doyle stated publicly, "to unbolt locked doors is undoubtedly due to Houdini’s mediumistic powers and not to any normal operation of the lock. The effort necessary to shoot a bolt from within a lock is drawn from Houdini the medium, but it must not be thought that this is the only means by which he can escape from his prison. For at times, his body can be... dematerialized and withdrawn."

Now, Houdini was placed in the classic magician’s "catch" position, meaning that he could only go so far in denying the Spiritualist claims. By going any further than he had, he would have to expose how his escapes were accomplished, which he could never do. His reply was simply that all of his escapes were managed by purely physical means. He stated that his crusade against Spiritualism was simply a way to protect the general public from charlatans but he, however, was able to keep an open mind on the subject and did not assume that all mediums were frauds. Spiritualist leaders declared that Houdini’s actions did not agree with his words and so the magician made a pact with a number of friends. The pact promised that whichever of them died first, he should make every attempt to contact the others by way of a secret code.